Colt Country | Home of The Almighty Colt

Yeah but he puts it down the barrel. 
I know Hawg, and I don't understand how lube down the barrel only would work either.

https://www.youtube.com/@CapBallFanatic-gb3jb
At least someone is having fun with cap & ball revolvers. This guy posts new You tube vidoes often and focuses on having a bit of fun with them along with the usual details. Nice change of pace.

I don't ream primer pockets but since I clean cases in a rotary tumbler with SS pins the primer pockets are completely clean.

At my last Cowboy Shoot my 38-40 black powder loads failed to fire in my Uberti 1866 at a rate of almost 50%. I was very puzzled as this has never happened. Inspecting the offending cartridges later showed light firing pin strikes, but that all primers (Winchester large pistol)were seated below the case rim. Rifle inspection showed nothing amiss so I broke down the remaining cartridges. I then used a RCBS hand priming tool and was able to further seat each primer. Those now empty cartridges fired normally in the same rifle. I load on a Dillon 550B which is now 40 years old, but I inspect each and every cartridge I reload for primer seating depth and know for certain none of those 38-40s had high primers. So I guess I will probably now use the hand priming tool as you can feel the primer bottom out in the pocket much better.

Well, just to satisfy myself that I wouldn't be wasting my time, this morning I did a brief preliminary test. A pair of Uberti mainsprings that came out of Cattleman(circa 1998 & 2000 and are definitely heavier than current production) were installed in my Uberti 51 Navy squarebacks. These two cap suck at the rate of 2/3 every 30 rounds or so despite everything done to them. After 60 total rounds I didn't have a single issue. No changes from usual other than the mainsprings. So I will hunt down more mainsprings of a similar weight as I intend to continue testing these two guns as well as a pair of 61 Navies and 60 Armies. I want to know about what weight mainspring is required to make these things work.

Thanks Mike. Your response sounds like a good solution. I will give it a try. I know what you mean about Colt mainsprings. I've replaced all my original Colt springs(tagged each one to what gun it came out of) and at one point in 3rd gen. Colt started using a tapered one. Worked on my friends un-altered early 1st gen and it had the heaviest mainspring I ever felt.
Marshal Will, I will probably use the Wolf springs as a starting point as many of my guns have them. Even the newer standard Uberti springs aren't much heavier.

Mike, another option may be CCI #11 caps. Yes I know they aren't the preferred Remingtons. However, CCI always used more priming compound (compared to Remington)which made the cap sit a bit higher on the cone. That might be enough to take up the slack. At least up till the covid issues hit that's how they were made. BTW, those were funny looking cones on the Navy. Hard for me to tell from a picture, but I've never run across straight sided cones as you described. At least not on any revolver.

I don't want this to come across as a complaint, but anyway here goes. About 20 years ago I needed a backstrap/trigger guard on a early 3rd generation Colt SAA re-blued. I sent it to Colt and it came back a plum color. Someone locally tried and it was again plum color. Decided to send it to Turnbull and it came back plum color again. I called Turnbull and was told there was something about the alloy used in the early 3rd gen Colts. You would figure Colt themselves would know what to do. Anyway I asked another local gunsmith (Dewey Vicknair) to rust blue it and it finally was satisfactory. Lost touch with Mr. Vicknair and hope he still in business as this gentleman does absolutely beautiful work.